Nintendo Labo gadgets can be remixed with 'Toy-Con Garage'

Nintendo stunned the gaming world last month when it unveiled Labo, a system that uses the Switch and some cardboard to make lovably homely little minigames. Reception among the Engadget staff was... mixed. But Nintendo might have nullified a growing concern about the system's longevity with its latest announcement. At a hands-on press event earlier today, the company introduced the Toy-Con Garage, a feature in the Labo's base software that lets users essentially create their own Switch-empowered cardboard toys.

It might be a complex process, though. Reports from the event explain that users can repurpose cardboard parts and apply new functionality to them through the Toy-Con Garage feature in the Labo software. During a demo, Nintendo showed how one could set the Motorbike cardboard-and-controller setup to drive the RC Car, or reconfigure the piano software and custom cardboard cutouts to make an electric guitar.

It's unclear how much leeway Nintendo will end up giving creators. The issue isn't in the system's makeshift controllers -- cardboard is cheap -- but in the Labo software. If it includes a lot of mappable functionality, it could prolong the platform's lifespan beyond the handful of projects in each first-party Nintendo kit.